Google Hands Out $15 Million In Cash Bonuses; Brin and Page Stay out of the Haul

Google Inc. has just announced that on Friday March 15th they will be handing out their 2012 bonuses for the company’s top executives. This information comes from a regulatory filing late yesterday afternoon. The top dollar amount will go to Google chairman Eric Schmidt who will receive $6 million dollars for his efforts in the past year.

Also picking up a share of the almost $15 million in total cash bonuses are Chief legal officer David Drummond who will take home a $3.3 million bonus, CFO Patrick Pichette grabbing a nifty $2.8 million bonus, and chief business officer Nikesh Arora who will also get a $2.8 million check for his 2012 efforts.

Such has been the case in previous years the search giant’s co founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page will not be receiving any bonus money. Mr. Page you may recall has been the Google CEO for the past two years after Eric Schmidt had given up the post. It’s not like those two are hurting for cash however considering their combined worth is upwards of $46 billion dollars.

Schmidt is also in the process of getting rid of a lot of his ownership stake in the company. It was actually disclosed last month that the chairman was selling some $2.5 billion in company stock during the coming year as part of a trading plan, as he reduces his stake by more than 40%.

These rewards to the executives were given “in recognition of their contributions to performance in fiscal year 2012”, according to Google. It warrants mentioning that the company took in $50 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2012, with their stock shares rising 10 percent over the previous year year. On Tuesday, they fell 1 percent to $827.61.

It hasn’t been all great news for Google as of late though. Earlier in the day Google agreed to pay a group of 37 states $7 million to settle complaints that its “street view” cars violated people’s privacy. This settlement was actually three years in the making after the company admitted to collecting information like passwords and e-mails from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks that its cars passed. Additionally Google announced last week that they will be adding 1,200 more job cuts to the 4,000 they had previously downsized from Motorola Mobility.